Dare (The Dare Trilogy) (28 page)

Her mind was a chaos of emotions: fear, anger and shame threatened to overwhelm her. She was holding up her shorts with one hand, her tights torn and the buttons missing, while with her other she attempted to cover her bare arms, holding herself protectively. Seeing this, Cam pulled his jacket and placed it over her shoulders.

“My bag,” she began to say in confusion. “I don’t know... Oh God, I think I left it back there.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied in a quiet voice. “We need to get you back to the hotel. We’ll sort that out later.”

As they came to the stairs that led out the back of
Bohemia
, for a few painful seconds she had no idea how she was going to climb down them and began to cry again, sobbing pitifully. She felt Cam move in front of her, his fingers delicate on her shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said soothingly. “Don’t worry, take your time. We’ll get you home.”

Home. His words, meant to comfort her, made her even more inconsolable and for a while her sobs became even louder. She could feel her face becoming a mess as tears dribbled down and she tried to wipe them away with a hand. Without saying anything else, Cam pulled her gently to him and she clung to him, feeling his warmth against her.

Part of her mind felt strangely detached: she knew she was, in some way, being stupid, that standing her blubbing like a baby would do nothing. There was also part of her that wanted to march back to Darius’s changing room and kick the shit out of the pathetic, vile human being that was Gary Johnson. But her body was not hers to control for the moment, and so she could do nothing but weep onto Cam’s chest.

It did make her feel better, however, and after a while the sobs subsided. When she lifted her head, she could make out another, indistinct form approaching them, a bleary shape that made her heart clench inside her chest with a wave of fear.

“Di? What’s wrong?”

Recognising Janey only by her voice, Dianne was torn between a desire to run to her friend, to hug her tightly, and a desire to run away and hide in shame. She turned her face, unable to look at Janey or be seen by her.

“I’m taking her back to the hotel,” Cam said. “Go back to the others.”

“Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do? Di? What’s happened?”

“Please, Janey!” Dianne’s voice was torn from her throat, unwillingly. She forced her tears back down when she saw Janey’s face, pale and concerned. “It’s... okay,” she forced herself to say. “I just... I just need to go back to the hotel for a bit. I’ll tell you... I’ll talk to you later. Please.”

Uncomprehending, Janey nodded her head and watched them silently as Cam helped her down the stairs. Dianne felt as though she were a hundred years old and stood in the street shivering as Cam hailed a cab to take them back.

When they were driving away, Cam sat beside her silently for a while. He had placed a hand on her knee, a consoling gesture, but when Dianne looked up at him she saw that he was staring through the window, his face fixed in an intensely angry stare. This made her tremble—she could guess at the violent thoughts flickering through his mind at that moment because she shared many of them.

Catching sight of her watching him, he forced a smile but then his face became serious again almost immediately. “We should go to the police,” he said at last.

“The police?” Dianne was astonished at the suggestion, partly because
that
hadn’t even occurred to her, but also because of all the potential consequences. She began to shake her head.

Taking her hands gently, he waited while she fought back the tears. “He hurt you,” he told her very softly at last. “There’s no way he should be allowed to get away with that.”

“No, no,” was all she could murmur at first. Then she began to babble. “But what about you and the band? If you go to the police, it’s all over.”

He gave a short, cynical laugh at this. “It’s all over anyway.” He looked out of the window. “I won’t force you, but we should really go to the authorities.”

She was unable to speak for a while. “It’s my fault,” she said in a very small voice.

“What?” The word escaped Cam’s lips more brutally than he intended as he snapped his head round, causing her to gasp, a single, gulping sob. His eyes were bright but also fierce, staring at her as he compressed his lips into a thin line. For a moment, neither of them could speak but then, taking in a deep breath to calm himself, he asked in more measured tones. “What do you mean? How is it your fault?”

Shame overwhelmed Dianne for a few seconds. “I... I’m sorry, Cam.” Tears, unbidden, began to flow again. “I shouldn’t have gone in there. If... If I hadn’t gone in... it wouldn’t... it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Hey, hey.” All anger, controlled or otherwise, was gone from his voice now, and he softly pulled her into his chest as the taxi continued on its journey. “He can’t hurt you now.” He paused. Dianne couldn’t look up at him, she couldn’t face him, but she knew from a slight tightening of his muscles that he was considering something else.

“Why did you go in?” he asked at last.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She tried to wipe away her tears, pushing against him slightly so that she could raise a hand to her eyes. She couldn’t look at him, but at last managed to blurt out: “It was about my visa.”

“What visa?” Cam’s voice sounded incredulous, but any tenseness in his voice had been replaced by confusion and at last Dianne felt able to look at him.

“For Russia. He said I’d need one to get into the country.”

Cam’s eyes were unfocused for a few seconds as he evidently tried to understand what she was telling him. Then, realisation slowly crossed his features and it was his turn to be unable to look her in the eyes.

“Shit,” he said, biting his fist and looking out of the window as they approached the hotel.

“Cam, I’m sorry,” she said, trying to console him as she placed a hand on his other fist which lay clenched on the seat between the two of them.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about,” he said bitterly. “Shit! How could I be so stupid?”

Both of them were silent after he paid the taxi driver and they went to their room. Cam looked like a huge, overgrown boy, his head hung down shamefacedly and pacing around the room as Dianne went through to the shower.

The water felt good on her body, washing away more than the simple dirt and sweat of the day. There was still a slightly tender patch on the side of her head where Darius had hit her, but even that didn’t feel so bad any more. She hated him
—hoped that she would never have to see him again—but that thought brought with it its own kind of despair: she felt that she had no choice but to return to the UK, and that almost certainly meant leaving Cam behind. For all his words about things being finished, she couldn’t bear to be the cause of his dreams being lost.

When she came through, a large towel wrapped around her, Cam seemed equally despondent. Perhaps the same thought had occurred to him.

He came forward and, once more, gently lifted up her hands in his. She stared down at them, his fingers so large and almost entirely covering her own small digits, so strong and powerful and yet so gentle at the same time. She couldn’t bear to look at him for a time, and felt that she would cry if she did stare into those piercing blue eyes.

“I’m sorry, Di,” he said, very quietly. “It’s all my fault.”

It was her turn to be confused. “What are you sorry for?” Now she did lift her head. She didn’t cry when she fixed on his eyes, but her heart was beating much more quickly.

“It’s all my fault. All my fucking fault. How could I be so stupid?”

“I don’t understand, Cam. What are you talking about?”

He sighed, his shoulders rising and falling as he let go of her hands and walked away a few pieces.

“What is it? Tell me, please.” She suddenly felt scared. Was this it, when he told her that he would have to follow his dreams, that he didn’t dare do otherwise?

“The visa. I can’t believe I could be so fucking stupid.” His face was pained as he looked back at her. “Tony’s always told me I tried to do too much, that we should get a manager. I just thought, you know, through Johnny and...” He paused, unable to say Darius’s name. “Through the rest of Optima, things just seemed to get sorted. Except that they didn’t.” He gave another bitter laugh. “There were enough fuck ups over hotels and venues, so why the hell should they give a shit who had a visa and who didn’t?”

Dianne laughed nervously. “Well, I can’t go to Russia, and that’s that.”

“Yeah,” he agreed quietly. “That’s that.”

He was about to say something else when the pair of them were disturbed by a knock at the door. Dianne instinctively grabbed her towel, hugging it more closely to her skin, and was about to rush back into the bathroom when Cam, recognising her fright, waved a hand gently to calm her. “I’ll see who it is. Don’t worry, if it’s one of the others, they’ll understand. We need a bit of time alone.”

When he answered the door, however, his voice registered surprise more than anything else.

Johnny entered the room, his eyes flickering warily between Cam and Dianne. Of all the other members of Optima, he was the only one who resembled Cam in any shape or form, and for a strange second Dianne wondered if there was some other secret that she hadn’t been told, that the two of them were not friends but brothers.

“What are you doing here?” Cam asked, his voice wary but not unfriendly.

“Hi Cam.” Johnny flicked his head in acknowledgement. “Hi...” His voice trailed off, unable to remember Dianne’s name.

Cam shrugged at this and pushed past Johnny a little more brusquely. “Now you get to see how the other half live. Want a drink?”

“That’ll be great. Whisky, if you’ve got it.”

“It’ll have to be a beer.”

“Whatever.” Johnny looked bemused. He wouldn’t stare directly at Dianne, but she could feel his sideways glances at her, something which made her feel strange. Cam pulled open a beer and offered it to the guitarist, a token gesture of friendliness.

“You still haven’t said why you’re here.”

Johnny didn’t answer at first, but instead took a long draught from the can, almost draining it, speckles of foaming beer trickling from the side of his mouth.

“That’s better,” he said at last, scrunching up the can and idly throwing it to one side. Cam followed the direction of the almost empty beer can with a slight scowl. For a few moments, nobody said anything.

“This... this is difficult,” Johnny said at last. He seemed to be trying to ignore Dianne completely, an impression reinforced when he asked: “Mind if we speak alone for a minute?”

“Yes, actually. I do mind. What’s wrong?”

“It’s about Darius.”

“Gary, you mean.”

This made Johnny frown. “Yeah, Gary.” He shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, man, he said he won’t press charges, he just -”

Johnny wasn’t able to complete his sentence as, in a flash of movement, Cam was on top of him, grabbing hold of his friend by the front of his shirt.

“What did you say? Won’t press charges?”

For the briefest instant, Johnny’s eyes flashed fearfully, caught out by this unexpected reaction. Then his eyes hardened and he pushed Cam away from him with both hands.

“Yeah, you heard it. He won’t press charges. But he wants an apology.”

“He wants a fucking apology?” It was Dianne’s turn to blaze with anger. “After what he did?”

Johnny ignored her, concentrating instead on Cam. “You fucked him up pretty bad, man. I had to... shit, Cam, I had to argue like for a fucking hour to stop him throwing you off the tour. It’ll be okay, but you have to apologise.”

Until that moment, Cam had been walking away from Johnny in disgust, but now he spun around and strode right up to his friend. “Apologise,” he sneered. “After he tried to rape her? Why shouldn’t we just go to the police, Johnny? Answer me that.”

The word rape had an electric effect on Johnny, causing his eyes to flash with an unusual alertness. “That’s not... that’s not how it happened, man,” he mumbled.

“Oh, you were
there, were you? That’s funny, ’cause I don’t remember seeing you in the fucking room when I had to break the door down. He was hitting her, Johnny—fucking hitting her. Do you understand? And he had his cock out, for what it’s worth. Christ alone knows what would have happened if I hadn’t been there.”

Johnny was backing away now, but Cam refused to move more than a few inches from his face, his eyes burning with rage.

“You fucked him up, man. We had to cancel tonight’s show—he should be in hospital...”

“He’ll be in hospital for a very long time when I’ve finished with him,” Cam snarled.

“Hey, calm down. You know how these things work out. Shit gets confused, man. It’s just rock and roll.”

At this, Cam stopped pursuing Johnny towards the door and Dianne was shocked to see a look of almost unutterable sadness fall across his face, as though he had just heard the death of a loved one.

“Just rock and roll,” he repeated quietly. “Jesus, Johnny. Listen to you.” He shook his head and turned back towards the bed where Dianne had sat down, removing herself from this conversation and watching the two men as something that should have been very private, very personal unravelled between them.